Page 62 of The Duke and His Jilted Bride

“You keep waiting for it to feel wrong,” Aurelia said quietly. “Being with me, I mean. Because of… some moral law? Is that it? You keep waiting for the moment it feels like a transgression, and it doesn't come, and so that confuses you?”

He looked at her, surprised that his eyes were stinging with tears. “Yes,” he said, his voice light and fragile. “Yes, that is exactly it.”

“I know it is,” she said. “I had the same thoughts at first. But to me, they were not nearly as powerful as everything else I have been made to feel in this marriage.” She looked at their joined hands, stroked his knuckles with her thumb. It almost made him sob. “Frederick never kissed me. In two months of engagement he never kissed me on the mouth. I didn't want him to. I understood that about myself quite early on, and I didn't know what to do with it either. You should know that. There has never been… Nothing about what I have experienced with you I have ever experienced before.”

He said nothing, couldn’t speak if he tried. The mere thought of her and Frederick made his head hurt, even if she was saying all the right things.

“There was a moment at his birthday dinner in Kent, the night he proposed to me,” she murmured. “You came down late – which was so unlike you – and you came into the room in a hurry. I was standing with Frederick.” She stopped, and her jaw worked slightly. “You were only supposed to be my future brother-in-law. It felt wrong to notice what I noticed. It felt like something expensive but vulgar I had found by accident in a shop, that I should put down immediately and not look at ever again.”

“What did you notice?” he asked.

“That I wanted you to come and stand near me instead of him,” she said. “That when you looked across the room I hoped you were looking for me specifically, even though I barely knew you. That when you didn't come near me I was disappointed in a way I had no right to be. I told myself it was just nerves about the engagement, about Frederick, about everything. And that you did have this wildness to you, this pull… You were the Duke. Why shouldn’t I have looked at you? I thought it was normal until…”

“Until what?”

“Well, until it happened again and again. Even when I was waiting for Frederick at the altar. And especially when you walked into my aunt's parlour after I was jilted, with that proposition.” A small pause, a smaller smile. “And I thought: oh dear, there it is again. It’s not just his pull. It’s… him and me.”

He looked at her for a long moment. The room had turned warm and still. From outside, a soft breeze shook the window panes indoors. Nike was snoring faintly. The country was otherwise quiet, and the night was dark and starless.

It was not a perfect night, in that sense. But it didn’t need to be. Because at that moment, she was perfect. He leaned forward, and he kissed her. It was slow and deliberate. He knew what he was doing and so did she. There was no indifference between them, not in the way his lips locked with hers and made his throat close, his body coil pleasantly. Her hand came up to his jaw, and he stayed there for a long moment before he pulled back.

She looked at him. Her cheeks were flushed. The shawl had slipped off one shoulder and she moved quickly to readjust it. He stopped her hand with his own, slipped the fabric back into place with her, his heart hammering so hard he could hear the blood pumping in his ears.

He slipped his hand up her neck and rested his thumb on her jaw, tilting her head just slightly to indulge himself in the view of her. His lips found the soft patch of skin beneath her ear, and he kissed her there achingly slow and soft. She sighed gently, and it was the most wonderful sound he had ever heard – more than the singing thrushes in the morning, the cicadas in summer, which had always been his favourite things.

There was another sound too, the soft creak of floorboards beyond the door, that neither of them heard. Instead Evander rested his forehead against Aurelia’s and breathed deeply.

“If it’s not easy,” she whispered, her breath ghosting against his chin, “that’s all right. It doesn’t need to be easy or natural. I won’t run away if you won’t.”

He nodded, relieved and more thankful for her than he had been for anything in his life. “I can manage that,” he said gently.

“We don’t need to share a bed. We don’t need to spend every moment together, though I may want to..” She laughed softly. “I understand that laying the idea of a life to rest is not easy. So tonight…” She kissed his cheek and drew back. “You should rest, and we will talk again in the morning. If that sounds convenable.”

He laughed. “More than convenable.”

“It shouldn’t kill us to be convenable.”

“No,” he agreed. “Not for one night at least.”

“And then tomorrow,” she rose and he missed her presence intently, “we will see whether convenable suits us. And if it doesn’t, that’s all right too. We’’ll make this work, you and I. So long as we stop running.”

Twenty-Two

The journal was from March, almost two months out of date, but the article on the development of the pianoforte was interesting enough to occupy her for a while, even if the style was too pedantic for her taste. Aurelia had her feet tucked under her, the tea going cold on the side table. Nike's head was on her knee. She had joined her in the morning room half an hour ago. The dog had been glued to her side ever since the farrier’s visit. Maybe she felt she needed to be near them now that her secret was out in the open. Aurelia cooed as she stroked Nike’s ear.

For the first time in several days, she was somehow not thinking about anything serious. It was a pleasant state of affairs on the whole. She intended to stay in that bubble of tranquility for as long as possible, her and Nike, the memory of her conversation with Evander the night prior keeping her company enough until she found him again. He had gone to read in the library alone. She knew by now that meant he wanted some time alone and was too tired to go walking outdoors.

She shifted to reach for her tea and caught movement outside the window. She looked up without thinking about it, until she spotted what was there and gasped.

Frederick and Seraphina were on the front steps. Frederick had his riding coat on and Evander’s horse was already brought around, so she supposed he had been planning a ride. But the way he held himself said something else entirely. Seraphina was speaking to him, gesticulating. Aurelia couldn't hear anything through the glass, but she could see Frederick's face. He was holding very still while she spoke to him, and that was strange.

Whatever Seraphina was saying, he did not like it. He said something back, short and savage. Then he mounted quickly and rode away without looking at her again. Seraphina stood on the steps for a moment, watching him go. She shook her head, said something with a snarled expression. Then she turned and went inside, taking the steps two at a time until she disappeared from sight behind the ivy.

Aurelia looked back at her copy of The Lady’s Monthly Gallery of Culture. She read the same paragraph about piano materials three times while analysing the strange scene in her mind.

Within five minutes the door opened.

“There you are,” Seraphina said, a little out of breath. There was colour in her cheeks, and her usually smooth hair was out of place by her temples. “I wondered where you had hidden yourself, my dear.”